news comment
Jan. 21st, 2026 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimac1. Some gadfly is objecting to a congressman running for governor on the grounds that he isn't a California resident. That strikes me as unfair. A member of Congress is functionally the local area's ambassador to the federal government. That person has to have their usual residence near the federal government, since that's where their job is. On the other hand, the whole point of their being there is that they're a citizen of their district. The congressman maintains a California address and uses it as his voting address. He's legitimate, and so are many other members of Congress who've run for governor of various states before now (e.g. our Pete Wilson was a senator when he was elected governor in 1990).
2. An apartment building a few blocks away from us - about 1/4 mile - had a major fire yesterday. News report: "A two-alarm fire ripped through a Sunnyvale apartment complex Tuesday morning, displacing two-dozen residents, authorities said. ... “Preliminary information indicates that three of the eight units sustained significant fire and smoke damage,” authorities said, “and the building as a whole was damaged.” No injuries were reported. The American Red Cross is providing assistance to the displaced residents." And it's not the only recent local one.
And I wonder if the displaced residents will be allowed access to their belongings, or if the building will be torn down and hauled away along with everything in it. I'm not impressed with the 'be grateful you're alive' argument. That has nothing to do with it. If your belongings were burned in the fire, that's fate. But if the authorities can't find a way for you to retrieve your belongings, the authorities are to blame.
3. So let's say the US does something that causes NATO to "collapse." What's left? Well, the EU plus the UK and Norway are already acting together for defense of NATO territory, so that's basically the European side of NATO. If Canada joins in, that means NATO hasn't collapsed, just that the US has flounced out of it.
2. An apartment building a few blocks away from us - about 1/4 mile - had a major fire yesterday. News report: "A two-alarm fire ripped through a Sunnyvale apartment complex Tuesday morning, displacing two-dozen residents, authorities said. ... “Preliminary information indicates that three of the eight units sustained significant fire and smoke damage,” authorities said, “and the building as a whole was damaged.” No injuries were reported. The American Red Cross is providing assistance to the displaced residents." And it's not the only recent local one.
And I wonder if the displaced residents will be allowed access to their belongings, or if the building will be torn down and hauled away along with everything in it. I'm not impressed with the 'be grateful you're alive' argument. That has nothing to do with it. If your belongings were burned in the fire, that's fate. But if the authorities can't find a way for you to retrieve your belongings, the authorities are to blame.
3. So let's say the US does something that causes NATO to "collapse." What's left? Well, the EU plus the UK and Norway are already acting together for defense of NATO territory, so that's basically the European side of NATO. If Canada joins in, that means NATO hasn't collapsed, just that the US has flounced out of it.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 06:24 pm (UTC)There's a missing clause here:
"If it is safe for you to retrieve your belongings, and the authorities can't find a way for you to retrieve your belongings..."
There are several ways in which it can be unsafe.
Unsoundness of the remaining structure is the most obvious of these. The authorities clearly should not let you go up to your former apartment if there is a nonnegligible risk that you will, in the process, fall through the floor, have a chunk of ceiling fall on you, or otherwise incur serious injury.
The other common way for it to be unsafe is the rather large number of toxic perils which may be present after a fire, due to the various and sundry interesting chemicals which were present prior to the fire, both in the building itself, and in its contents, including those belonging to yourself. (It is amazing how many toxins lurk in modern electronics.)
Some of these toxins simply lurk in the surroundings. Such environmental toxins, or at any rate most of them, can be dealt with if you are (a) willing (b) able and (c) competent to wear a hazmat suit while digging through the ruins of your former home. Oh, and can afford to provide one; unless you believe it is the responsibility of said authorities to provide you with one. (I would argue that it was the responsibility of your insurer, if you have one.)
However, some of these toxins can and often will get into those belongings, in which case there's no real point in retrieving them. That is, of course, unless you have the means and money to detoxify them -- and they are something that can be detoxified without being destroyed in the process. Family photos, for example, typically cannot. Ditto books.
And, here's the fun part, you don't know, you are almost certainly not competent to know, whether your various personal possessions are contaminated or not.
You could, of course, put them into sealed containers (multiple, because if some are and some aren't you don't want cross-contamination), and bring them to a competent person, who will determine what is contaminated and what isn't contaminated, and cleanse what can be cleansed, and dispose of what can't.
This is also quite expensive. Again, insurance if you've got it and you're covered for it (which you probably aren't, as it isn't likely to be covered by most renter's policies; and isn't necessarily going to be covered in a homeowner's policy either); and if you can't afford insurance, you surely can't afford decontamination services.
So, that's why the authorities won't let you go get your possessions. If we were right-wingers we might now bleat about the "nanny state," but of course we aren't.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 06:41 pm (UTC)You left out the important part, even though you quoted it: the authorities have to find a way to retrieve your belongings.
When buildings are unsafe, who decides how unsafe they are, and how much of a risk people are willing to undertake? I'm not satisfied that risk analysis here is always justified. And even when buildings are deemed unsafe, fire personnel will go in them, properly protected of course, and if they can do it, either they can retrieve things or they can properly equip others.
As for toxins, there are toxins all over the surviving buildings in Altadena, yet residents are expected to return to those buildings, often over their own objections.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 07:04 pm (UTC)And, no, the authorities do not "have to" find a way to retrieve your belongings. That's not in their job description. The firefighters have a mandate to (a) save lives and (b) prevent further property damage, in that order; they have no duty, once the fire is out, to retrieve property that is in a hazardous zone or to provide you with PPE (and training to use it) so you can retrieve it. Why put that burden on them? They're already risking their lives to save, at least potentially, yours. (They will also often take the trouble to save pets, which they are not strictly required to do.)
As for "who decides how unsafe they are," while the gummint has the final say, I believe that the real work of assessment is mostly down to specialists from insurers, who are very good at estimating risks. They have to be; wagering on risks in bulk is how they make their money. (I have learned a lot about how insurance works in the last sixteen years...)
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 07:13 pm (UTC)For this reason I discount both claims that it's too dangerous and claims that it isn't too dangerous. Having read about the 'specialists' and 'experts' who determine that accidental fires were deliberately set - have you read about Cameron Todd Willingham? - or that dead babies were maliciously shaken who weren't - I don't trust these 'estimates.'
And if it's not part of the job description to retrieve, that's exactly what I'm complaining about. It should be. But not, as you're implying, in the middle of extinguishing the fire. I'm talking about afterwards, when it is part of their job description to keep residents out.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 08:07 pm (UTC)Okay, then. Whose job, exactly, are you saying it ought to be to retrieve the belongings? Not the firefighters, surely; they must be available to fight the next fire. And as for "the people whom it is "part of their job description to keep residents out" -- the usual method for "keeping residents out," as I understand it, is to put some yellow hazard tape, and maybe a police lock, on the place, and then go away; so there isn't really anybody whose "job descripotion" it is to keep them out.
As for Cameron Todd Willingham -- you're talking about Texas: which is an alternate reality, and anecdotal at that; it gives no basis for discounting people who actually know what they're doing.
In the real world insurance underwriters (and that is not who provided the evidence that condemned Willingham) are very good at assessing risks; if they weren't insurance companies would fail with startling regularity; or else exceed the profit margins permitted by the State insurance commissions, which results in their having to refund the excess to their policyholders, making the shareholders unhappy. (I'm talking about property-and-casualty insurance companies, here: not healtcare insurance companies, which, in their present form, are a form of evil unleashed on the nation by -- you guessed it -- Richard Nixon; and certainly not life insurance companies, which are kind of blandly evil.)
Obviously, they can't predict whether a particular building will kill someone who goes up to the third floor. But they can, with chilling accuracy, say what the probability is that someone will: that is to say, of a hundred buildings of this type, in this condition, and someone goes up to the third floor of those buildings, X number of those people will get killed and Y will be grievously injured-- and if you could find X cases where this has happened, they'd be right, plus or minus one or two casualties.
Okay, by "expected to return" you mean "insurance company isn't paying for them to stay elsewhere anymore." In my world that means "Nobody cares enough to keep them from having to return." "Expected to return" would mean that someone actively wanted them to.
Anyway, I mentioned in my last note that happening to one of my acquaintances (a colleague from a previous job). The other is fortunate enough to have someone they can stay with in the medium term while putting money aside to have the house decontaminated to a more thorough standard than the insurer covered. They're still going to lose a lot of their books, clothing, upholstered furniture, etc., because they can't really be decontaminated without effectively destroying them.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 09:02 pm (UTC)p3) There's lots of other places like Texas, and the false analysis that convicted Willingham was, and possibly still is, widespread. You can't erase this point by sleight-of-hand this way.
p4) The notion that corporations have to be efficient because otherwise they would fail financially is so laughably false I don't even need to discuss it.
p5) I'd believe this more if the firefighters themselves don't violate this rule with frequency. True, their job involves risking their lives, but seeing what goes on with police shooting harmless people because "they fear for their lives," I'm highly skeptical of estimations of these risks. Further (see previous point) I'm not satisfied that the adjusters estimate risks accurately.
p6) A difference which makes no difference is no difference.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-23 10:29 pm (UTC)